A few weeks ago, I was looking at my brother’s Friends list on Facebook. Although they have never met each other, he and my friend Melanie have a mutual friend, but I don't know most of his Facebook friends. Anyway, this time I noticed a first name I recognized, although the last name was different. I went to check this person’s Friends list and sure enough, her parents were on her list so it had to be her. While I was looking to see if her parents, brother or hometown friends were on her list, I noticed a familiar face; one of the instructors that was coming to teach a class at the scrapbooking conference I was helping to organize. I mentally filed the information away.
A couple weeks later, I was taking the class at the scrapbooking convention, and the instructor mentioned that her friend Keira had driven up with her. “Is that Keira W?”, I asked. Sure enough, it was. We chatted a couple minutes there and then, and got together later that day for a longer visit. Of course, she was way more surprised to see me than I was to see her. Keira is more my sister’s age, but coming from a small town, we know a lot of the same people.
This happens to me a lot. In the past 15 years, there have been several people from my hometown move here. Years ago, I was shopping downtown and someone I didn’t recognize asked me if I was Michele Maiden name. It turned out that she is the younger sister of a girl I used to figure skate with, and her father was my home-room teacher for grade 7 or 8. We run into each other about every six months and get caught up on each other’s news.
Another time I was at my husband’s church and they had a new priest they were interviewing. They didn’t announce his name or anything, so I hadn’t a clue who he was. We sat near him a lunch and somehow, it came out that he was from my hometown. At that point I asked him who he was. Turned out he was the brother of a friend of my sister’s and I occasionally hung out with his older brother in high school. To make it weirder, my oldest son has the same first name as he does, and when I chose my younger son’s first name, his younger brother was the only other person I’d ever heard of with the same name. Anyway, he was hired as the rector and we got to be pretty good friends.
At the same church there was one parishoner that I thought looked familiar, but I thought it was just that she’d moved away for a while. It wasn’t until I’d known her for a few years that I discovered we’d both gone to the same university, at the same time, and we had taken some of the same courses. No wonder she looked familiar!
When I first moved here I started volunteering at the library. One day, the new director of the library system came to check out our branch. Several of the volunteers were invited to meet her. When we were introduced, I said I already knew her; I was Michele Maiden Name. I used to baby-sit for her. I drove one of my fellow volunteers crazy. Frequently I'd point out some item; a poster, or a magazine article, and say "I know that guy!" I'm sure she thought I was making things up. The day the director showed up was priceless.
Mark comes from a big city. He rarely has this happen to him. I come from a small town in the middle of nowhere, and it happens all the time. The only place he beats me is in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, he's three degrees separated. I'm four degrees.
No comments:
Post a Comment